For example, an image filing system for an eye fundus camera has been known as an ophthalmologic image recording apparatus.
The mainstream of the system is a system for capturing a still image of an eye to be examined, in a recording medium in synchronization with an analog video signal used in a camera including an analog video output terminal.
In recent years, because it is easy to digitize, general digital cameras have been used in a film compartment of the eye fundus camera. In particular, the reason why a single-lens reflex type digital camera is used is that remote image sensing from the eye fundus camera is possible and it has high compatibility with conventional film type cameras and resolution sufficient for an ophthalmologic diagnostic image.
In order to be able to easily store, retrieve, and view images, the images can be transferred from the general digital camera to a personal computer through memory cards, cables, or the like.
On the other hand, the image filing system for the eye fundus camera requires information correlating with image sensing, such as (1) “when”, (2) “where image sensing is performed”, (3) “who”, and (4) “either eye”, in addition to the image. Therefore, in order to achieve this, there has been known that the information correlating with image sensing is directly inputted to the personal computer or the information correlating with image sensing is outputted from the eye fundus camera and then stored in correlation with the image of the eye to be examined.
An apparatus for automatically reading the information correlating with image sensing, such as eyes to be sensed (left and right) from an image sensing device has been known an example of such a technique (see Patent Document of JP 2002-238860 A).
However, when the image of the eye to be examined and the information correlating with image sensing are surely correlated with each other to improve the reliability of the apparatus, it is necessary to substantially simultaneously obtain the image and the information correlating with image sensing. This can be achieved without problems because the image can be promptly obtained in a conventional mode for capturing the video signal.
However, in the case of image sensing using a generally used digital camera, image generation and mass data transfer are performed in the digital camera, so image acquisition requires considerable time. In order to avoid this, a method of inhibiting next image sensing until after the completion of the image acquisition is expected. In this case, it is impossible to perform image sensing with short intervals, such as fluorescent image sensing. In order to deal with the image sensing with short intervals, when the information correlating with image sensing is added to only a first image of successively sensed images and other images are not correlated with the information correlating with image sensing, a plurality of images, each of which does not include the information correlating with image sensing exist.
When the general digital camera is used in the film compartment of the eye fundus camera, the remote image sensing from the eye fundus camera is normally performed. However, when image sensing operation is performed by using an image sensing switch provided in the main body of the eye fundus digital camera, an image other than images sensed by the eye fundus camera (improper image which is not an eye fundus picture) generates.
Even when the image generation, the image transfer, or the like is caused by noise which an operator does not expect, the same occurs.
When such concern is taken into account, it is hard to surely correlate the image of the eye to be examined and the information correlating with image sensing while avoiding an improper image and to perform continuous image sensing at an image sense interval shorter than an image transfer time.